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Making it clear it would no longer entertain personal grievances or queries received ‘directly’ from stakeholders, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked universities including the University of Pune (UoP) and its affiliated colleges to set up redressal mechanisms at their level.

UGC joint secretary AK Dogra in a letter to the UoP has instructed students, teaching and non-teaching staff and other stakeholders not to directly approach the Commission. “In the recent past, UGC has been receiving a lot of complaints/ queries from individual students, teachers, non-teaching employee and union members. These are personal grievances about regulations/ norms/ guidelines pertaining to appointments/ promotions or academic matters apart from queries related to MPhil/ PhD regulations,” the letter reads.

The UGC has stressed that all possible options be exhausted at the institution/ management / state level to redress complaints/ grievances of stakeholders through appropriate mechanism and only if it fails should they be forwarded to the UGC “In case the University or colleges are unable to redress a grievance, a representation should be sent to UGC through the respective institutions along with their comment,” Dogra said.

As per the UGC, there are 615 universities and around 32,000 colleges that employ nine lakh teachers and where approximately two crore students in regular streams are enrolled, apart from distance education mode and it was finding it tough to deal with the direct flow of grievances of stakeholders in absence of redressal mechanisms at the institution level. The UGC has exhorted universities to prevail upon affiliated colleges to set up redressal mechanisms.

Senior UoP officials said measures would be taken to address the issue raised by the Commission.